I could have brought the card to Central Station and left it for Pardy and Diaz, but I didn't want to wait three days for results. I phoned an LAPD criminalist named John Chen. John and I had worked together in the past, but when I reached his office at the Scientific Investigations Division, they told me he had the day off. Perfect. I hung up, then phoned a detective I knew on the Hollywood Station Juvenile Section named Carol Starkey. Starkey had been a bomb technician with LAPD's Bomb Squad until some bad breaks made her change jobs, so she knew almost as much technical stuff as Chen.

When Starkey answered, she said, "You finally calling to ask me out?"

"No, I'm calling to see if you can recover information off a key card for me."

I explained about the card, the body, and what I was doing.

She said, "No shit? You think this guy is your father?"

"No, I don't think he's my father. I just want to find out what's on the card."

"Call Chen. Chen knows how to do that."

"Chen has the day off."

"Hang on."

She put me on hold. While I waited, I stacked the garbage bags the man in the pink shirt had piled around my car into a huge mound against his door. Pissy.

Starkey came back on the line.

"Chen will meet us at SID in an hour."

"I thought he had the day off."

"Not anymore."

I hung up, then checked my watch. It had been almost nine hours since John Doe #05-1642 had been murdered. The key card was about to open a door to his identity, and to far more than I wanted to know.

PART THREE

PART TWO

Father Knows Best Chapter 8

L APD's Scientific Investigation Division shared its location with the Bomb Squad, where Carol Starkey had spent three years strapping into an armored suit to de-arm or destroy improvised explosive devices while everyone else hid under a tree. You've seen bomb techs in the news. They're the men and women dressed in what looks like a space suit, bent over a box or a backpack that's loaded with TNT, trying to render it safe before it explodes. Starkey was good at it, and loved it, until it finally went bad. Starkey and her supervisor were killed on the job, blown apart in a trailer park by a keg of black powder and nails. The medics brought her back and the surgeons stitched her together, but they wouldn't let her go back to the Squad. She worked in Criminal Conspiracy for a while, and now she worked on the Juvenile desk, but she still missed the bombs. Some woman, huh?Starkey was leaning against a dark blue Bomb Squad Suburban when I pulled into the parking lot. She was in her early thirties, with a long face, limp hair, and a dark gray pin-striped suit that went with her attitude. She was smoking.